Louis unlatched the lid of his chest from the inside and pushed it wide. Rising stiffly, he stretched his long legs. His wanderings had made it necessary to forsake traditional sleeping arrangements in favor of the modified steamer trunk. His coffin was relegated to being a permanent fixture in the townhouse in the Rue Royale, which was still his home.
Louis turned to retrieve his stack of sweaters from the bureau and discovered he was not alone. His pulse quickened.
“You look guilty, Louis.”
Lestat lounged against the windowsill and Louis’s heart ached at the sight of him. Only the barest ember remained to fire his maker’s blue-gray eyes. His words were surly but his voice was seductive, as it had always been. His melancholy had not diminished this. How many times had Lestat waited for his fledgling to rise, pondering the deepening twilight he said he had hated as a mortal? How familiar this was!
Louis gave his shoulders a slow shrug. “Have you ever known me to look otherwise, Lestat?”
He placed his belongings in the trunk before sliding its bulk clear of the door, trying to calm his thundering heart. He felt Lestat’s gaze upon him, scrutinizing his every motion as he started to catch up his hair in a black ribbon, and he willed himself not to stiffen. He did not like being watched. Not at all.
Yet Lestat seemed to derive a certain pleasure from it, and it was a simple enough gift to give.
Sighing, Louis’s hand dropped onto the bureau before it slid off the laminated surface and into his pocket, depositing the ribbon that still played between his fingers. His hair cascaded over his shoulders as he turned. Lestat’s eyes rose to meet his.
“No,” his maker said, smiling languidly. “You have always been the most beautiful picture of sorrow.”
Louis crossed the room slowly, peering out the window at the lights of the city before mirroring Lestat’s stance. He was immediately lost in those blue-gray eyes, bottomless and ever-changing. There was hunger there, dormant, waiting to erupt into fits of rage or collapse in immeasurable joy. The uncertainty had always been intoxicating, yet he knew his maker would entertain neither. Lestat had been beyond reach since that demon raped his soul.
Anger. Pain. The enormity of it crushed his chest, knotting his throat. He willed it back. Just a little while longer, just a few moments.
“I’m glad you’ve come,” Louis whispered. He reached out and slowly ran his thin fingers along the collar and down the breast of Lestat’s shirt. Gently, he took his maker’s hand, unable to resist marveling in its icy surface. No mortal artist could recreate the opalescence he saw in its depths. He drew the fingers to his lips, pressing the marble-like flesh with a desire he’d always felt but rarely acknowledged.
Lestat seemed enraptured, his jaw slack, unable to take his gaze from Louis’s eyes as his hand was warmed against his fledgling’s breast.
“Tell me why you gave me the Dark Gift,” Louis said.
Shaking his head as if awakening from a deep contemplation, Lestat jerked his hand free. “You’re playing with me.”
“You know I cannot do that,” Louis said.
Sorrow. He swallowed it as he watched his maker circle the small room, wrestling with his skepticism. Lestat looked weary. Even his silk shirt seemed subdued, its creamy radiance tucked into pleated gray trowsers. Wool and conservative. Louis’s brow furrowed as his eyes sought out Lestat’s requisite leather jacket and was surprised to find, rather, a steel blue cashmere sweater thrown across the bed. Stylish and elegant, but very unlike Lestat. He tried to ignore the foreboding that suddenly filled him. Danger lurked. Fear for Lestat.
His maker sank into a chair and brushed a tendril of yellow hair off his face. “Why? Why do you want to hear this now?”
Louis shrugged. “I’m not certain,” he admitted. “You wrote of it in your autobiography and your other books of course, but you were angry with me then.” He lifted a straight-backed chair from the small writing desk and set it beside Lestat. Louis lowered himself onto its seat and crossed his long legs. “I can piece it together, but as you know, my powers of deduction are far from perfect.”
Lestat laughed cruelly. “You were wrong about me on almost all counts. You have never understood what the Dark Gift means to me.”
“I need to understand, Lestat,” Louis said quietly, urgently. “I have a feeling my life depends upon it.” He sighed deeply. “And perhaps yours does as well.” Sadness flooded over him suddenly. No, not yet! He squeezed his eyes shut to force it away.
This did not go unnoticed by his maker. Concern had replaced the skepticism on Lestat’s face as the blue-gray eyes searched his fledgling’s face.
“What is it, Louis? What has happened?” Lestat leaned forward and covered Louis’s hands with his.
The intimacy of hearing his name pass Lestat’s lips was more than he could bear. Lestat was still Lestat and such affection as he felt now from his maker had never come easily. His composure was crumbling rapidly and he had no power left with which to fight it.
For nearly a year Louis had wandered, forsaking his home rather than being of further irritation to his maker. The last story he’d told, of his ordeal with Memnoch, had shattered Lestat, leaving him desolate, haunting that orphanage along with the nameless spirits. Louis’s presence seemed to give no comfort and he’d fled New Orleans, returning as he always did to the anonymity of California.
But had he truly left to satisfy some imagined craving his maker might have had for solitude? Or had he simply escaped, running from the guilt he felt at having lured Lestat into chains? Or from his own emptiness as he watched Lestat slide into obscurity, dying before his very eyes?
He had never felt so alone.
Blood tears flooded his eyes. So many in the span of a day. Strange. He hadn’t shed a tear since telling Daniel of Claudia’s death. The tightness closed about his heart. He blinked and was amazed to see Lestat’s extended handkerchief. He hadn’t felt the hand slip away.
“Thank you,” he said, touching the linen to his eyes. He sighed deeply to quell his emotions. “I need you, Lestat. Something has changed inside me and I need your help to find some understanding of it.” He studied the crumpled handkerchief in his hands.
“Always so invincible, so imperturbable.” His maker’s voice was the merest hush. “Dear God! You feel pain again!”
The lump rose in his throat and he swallowed hard. “Yes.”
“Louis, you’re--”
“Lestat,” he blurted out, interrupting, resisting the seduction of his maker’s voice. He continued hurriedly, his words barely audible. “I can’t stand battling with you any longer. I cannot do it! You are too dear to me.”
He looked up from his lap. Lestat’s face was close and he was as extraordinary as the night he had revealed what Louis could become. His maker reached up and, with the back of his hand, brushed the black hair away from his face. Louis’s eyes closed at the touch.
“Louis,” Lestat murmured softly. “Don’t you know how beautiful you are to me? How enchanted you have always held me?”
Louis pressed the linen to his eyes, shaking his head. “I believed you wrote those words to hurt me, mocking me with affections you had never expressed, to repay me for the terrible things I said of you.”
Lestat breathed deeply. “Only in comparing you with Nicki. I knew that would hurt you. My reasons for giving you the Dark Gift were never so mundane.”
There was nothing condescending in his maker’s tone. Louis searched those blue-gray eyes and found them warm, tinged with red. He offered up Lestat’s own handkerchief and watched as those eyes were dried.
“Well, you had asked for it, Louis, and now you’ve finally seen me weep.” Lestat rose, unnerved yet smiling, and disappeared behind him.
Louis did not turn, did not intrude. But it was a precious moment, one of a handful, one he had scarcely dared dream possible again. As he absently stroked his brow, he felt an inner warmth pervading his spirit and he smiled. Lestat’s hand slid down over his shoulder and he reached up to clasp it, running his thumb idly over its smooth surface.
“I could never harm you, you know,” he said. “My deepest regrets have been for the pains I have allowed against you.”
“I know, Louis,” said his maker. “I know.”
“And I love you.”
Lestat’s other hand encircled his neck. He felt the moist press of lips behind his ear and he pulled Lestat close.
They held each other for what seemed like ages before Louis broke the spell.
“I must feed,” he said quietly. “I don’t want to wait tonight. Afterward, we can find a place to talk.”
“I’d like that.” His maker disengaged himself.
“Come with me?” Louis rose, faced Lestat, and smiled. “You may watch, if you like. I think I’d like that tonight.”
“Oh, Louis! You are full of surprises. You could make an old vampire thirst again.”
There was a hollowness in his maker’s words, but the familiarity of them made Louis’s smile grow. “You are but six years older than I, Lestat.”
“In human years, perhaps.” His maker laughed.
Louis became serious behind his smile. “Before anything else, I am human, my beloved. I can ignore my human nature no more than I can my vampire nature. You, more than any other vampire, know this to be true.”
Lestat stared blankly, his whisper awed. “Louis, you have changed.”
“Yes.”
“You must tell me how this happened.”
“I will,” Louis said. He strode to the bed and retrieved the cashmere sweater, holding it out for Lestat. “Later. Now I want to feed.”
He stood patiently while his maker pulled the sweater over his silk shirt and adjusted the collar.
“That’s a stunning look, Lestat. The textures suit you.”
“Do you think so?” Lestat stepped to the mirror to retie his hair, but instead gazed up at his fledgling in the glass. He pulled the steel blue ribbon free and let it fall onto the bureau. He shook out his masses of yellow locks and left them hanging loose, just touching his shoulders.
Louis grinned despite himself and stepped up beside Lestat. “Now don’t we look the pair? At least you still have the tan to match that brilliant mane.”
“You know I wore this sweater for you, don’t you?”
Louis held the door for his maker. “I know.”
The man had just inserted his key in the car’s door when he looked up, sensing something amiss. Too late.
“Sleep,” Louis whispered as the skin of the man’s neck gave way beneath his fanged teeth and he began sucking nourishment. He drew hard, wave after wave of the rich blood flowing luxuriantly down his throat. The rhythm of the startled heart quickly slowed to match his, the pounding rising, filling his consciousness. Deeper he drank, urging that heart into his own, the warmth rushing ecstatically through his every vein. His knees threatened to buckle as the sensation rocked him, crashing over him, and he clasped his victim tighter. Then the dying heart skipped a beat and its rhythm quickly dropped off.
Louis drew deeply once more at the wound and pulled back before the heart stilled. He knicked his tongue, loosing a drop of his own blood. He licked the wound clean, his blood closing the punctured flesh. Quickly, he helped the corpse open the car door and then lifted it onto the driver’s seat, arranging the body as if it had suffered a sudden stroke.
Closing the door on the smell of rapid decay, Louis strode across the dark parking lot to where Lestat waited at the back of the pawn shop. He knew he should take better measures to conceal his victim’s body, but his focus was entirely on Lestat. He was surprised to find his maker’s back to him, his head bowed.
He laid his hand on Lestat’s shoulder. “You cannot even watch now?” he asked, gently.
His maker’s eyes met his. “No,” was all he said.
Louis nodded, though he understood nothing beyond the guilt Lestat felt. He was confused by the hunger evident in his maker’s eyes, contradicting himself. Again the foreboding pressed near.
“Come,” he said. “I know a peaceful place where we might talk uninterrupted. Can you take us there?”
Lestat laughed quietly, the sound as music to Louis’s ears, making him smile. “All you ever need do is ask.”
His maker took him tightly around the waist and they lifted swiftly into the air.
“What is this place?”
“Hakone Gardens,” Louis explained, unwrapping his arms from Lestat’s neck. “It’s modeled on a similar garden in Japan. They have its history posted, if you’d like to read it.”
His maker nodded absently, staring up at a trinity of redwoods that towered above a network of delicately constructed streams and ponds, a reproduction of a traditional Japanese home.
“There is an artist’s dormitory and a caretaker’s cottage down the hill,” Louis continued. “I’ve never known them to wander after dark, though.”
“Unfortunate. The moonlight plays so marvelously on the surfaces.”
Louis smiled, happy to see his maker’s interest. Lestat had always loved symmetry in art and Louis had hoped the garden would spark this reaction.
They meandered along the narrow trails, stopping to admire the twists and turns of the many maples, junipers, and pines. Louis led them under a long wisteria arbor running straight up the hillside. They climbed leisurely. The arbor opened onto a wooden platform edged with plank rails and benches and roofed with a lattice of beams. Another trail careened off to the left, up along the spine of this hill.
Louis heard a car wind through the canyon far below as he watched Lestat sit lightly on a rail, stretching out his long legs and leaning against a corner post.
“Very nice, Louis.” His maker sighed.
He smiled, pleased. He sat quietly, listening to the myriad other night creatures roaming the garden.
“Why did you tell Daniel your story?” Lestat’s voice was pitched so low that a mortal standing at the foot of the platform would not have heard.
“My God,” Louis gasped, matching his maker’s tone. “Do you never ask simple questions, Lestat?”
Lestat slowly smiled. “We are far from simple creatures.”
“Yes, that’s true,” Louis mused. “I suppose I talked to Daniel because I could not speak with you. As far as I knew, you were dead and gone. I had no reason to believe otherwise. I had heard nothing of you since the Théâtre des Vampires.”
A light seemed to fire his maker’s eyes briefly. “Go on, Louis.” Lestat’s voice seemed strained, distant.
Louis furrowed his brow. Lestat had never revealed what he had so desperately pleaded to say that long ago time in Paris. He sensed this was not the time to again press this question, and he was not sure this is what had sparked such a reaction anyway.
He crossed his legs, draping an arm over his knee. “Daniel’s offer was a chance to warn the mortal world.” Louis saw the corner of his maker’s lips curl. “No, don’t laugh, Lestat. I pick off my victims with utter disregard. They deserved a warning, to know that simply walking alone in the night was crime enough.” He sighed. “But ultimately, my reasons were selfish. I simply needed to speak of all that had happened.”
“Why not Armand?”
Louis shook his head. “Armand was as much my victim as any mortal, though with him I spared no cruelty. Year after year, I drained him, slowly killing him. He wasn’t real and, by the time he left me, neither was I. In him, I perfected my ruthlessness.”
“Do you miss him?”
“Yes, very much,” he said without hesitation.
Lestat nodded. “He was an innocent to the last.” His voice took on an edge. “And foolhardy. To the last.”
Louis murmured his assent. “Strangely näive. And so very beautiful.”
“Yes, he knew exactly how to make us love him. But he was never the beguiling creature you are.”
Louis blushed. Twice in a day he’d been described with that word. Beguiling. He saw his maker smiling at his discomfort.
“Do you enjoy embarrassing me, Lestat?” he asked, old animosities rising quickly.
“Yes, actually, I do. Little else in this world still holds as much pleasure. Your complete lack of vanity is irresistible.” He laughed.
“Well do try,” Louis growled.
“I’m afraid that’s impossible, bien-aimé.” He held up his hand to quiet any further protests. “No, you asked me to help you understand.”
“Perhaps I was hasty,” Louis said under his breath.
But Lestat already seemed far away, lost in whatever memories swam behind his eyes. When he continued, it was in a whisper.
“So I will tell you of the first time I saw you.” Lestat crossed his arms in his lap and bowed his head, seemingly calling upon some well of inner strength. He raised his eyes, studying his fledgling across the platform.
Louis was astounded to realize his maker was observing him as he had centuries earlier, with a cunning and vibrancy long missing from his eyes. The tightness clutched at his heart.
“You’re correct that I wrote in anger and, yes, I wanted the words to sting. I wanted you to question their honesty. But you deserve to hear it told complete and unstained.” His lips twisted into a smile. “I make no promises, however. I don’t know if I can tell a story plainly.” His blue-gray eyes shifted, staring blindly down the arbor. “I’d arrived in New Orleans perhaps a month earlier, finding my father in those hideous rooms. I’d never felt strongly one way or the other for my father, not really. But the Revolution had robbed him of what little grip he’d had left on reality. And my anger at being banished by Marius, at least to my mind then, left me with little patience for my father’s few lucid moments.” Lestat sighed.
Louis wondered if his maker pictured his dead father in those terrible places that demon had shown him. He shuddered and rose slowly, crossing the platform to sit below Lestat’s railing, his maker’s eyes following his movement. Louis stretched his long legs along the bench and leaned against the same wide post.
Lestat’s hand rested upon Louis’s head and his strong fingers gently stroked his fledgling’s gleaming black hair. He continued quietly.
“I loathed being around him. After seeing to it that the maid I’d hired would indeed feed and clean him without stealing his pocket change, I fled into the night. Furious, I gorged myself to the point of sickness those first nights. But I grew tired of it and began stalking my victims, choosing carefully at twilight and hoping the scoundrel would commit some heinous act during the evening, something vile enough to be worthy of my wrath.”
“I must have been a terrible disappointment to you,” Louis said with a quiet laugh.
Lestat tipped his head to the night and listened as a rustling erupted and as quickly died away behind a thicket of heavenly bamboo. He smiled.
“No, you were a surprise, bien-aimé. As I stood opposite a brothel one evening, cataloging the patrons as they crossed the threshold, I caught sight of you ambling down the street. You seemed devoid of purpose or direction.” He laughed delightedly. “Your hair was a fright, so I didn’t become entranced with it until several nights later, and I supposed you were drunk, and probably had been for days. Yet you did not move as a drunkard.” Lestat shook his head in wonder. “I was struck by this first because you walked as one of us even then, and indeed I feared you were some fiend come to exact revenge upon me for disturbing Akasha’s peace.”
Louis struggled with his detachment. It was more difficult than he’d imagined to listen to himself described so frankly, yet his need to understand was greater.
“Unfortunately, you had meandered past before I’d had chance for more than a confirming glimpse of your fingernails, that you were no fiend. I had been too shocked by your perfect stature and nearly regal disregard for the rush of the filthy throngs to think of following you until you had disappeared. It did not stop me from scouring the area for you, however.”
He laughed quietly. “I didn’t feed that night, or the next while I searched. And I was even shorter with my father in my rush to get out of his rooms, God forgive me.”
“God, Lestat?” Louis repeated softly.
His maker sighed. “No, I’m no closer to understanding it, Louis. I wish I was. But I’ll tell you this.” He laughed. “I don’t want to die any time soon.” His eyes misted. “And I wish I remembered Heaven clearly. I try, probably far more often than I should, but it’s out of reach.”
Louis looked up at his maker and smiled. “I hope you get your wish. I think I should like to see that in your face.”
“Thank you, Louis.” His eyes lighted and he squeezed Louis’s shoulder. “We’re not damned, you know. If God Incarnate could invite my embrace, knowing what I am, how can we be damned simply by being what we are?” He let his arm encircle his fledgling’s neck. “Louis, I can feel it. His blood, alive inside me. Growing.” His eyes clouded, his voice all but inaudible. “It has become a sheer act of will that I do not succumb to it every waking moment.” He sighed.
Louis gently pulled Lestat onto his lap, cradling his broad shoulders with his arm. Not damned. The thought rolled through his mind, echoing quietly. Not damned. For several minutes, he could do no more than slowly rock his maker, smoothing the yellow curls.
“Please go on, Lestat.”
He felt his maker’s smile. “I do, don’t I? Where was I? Oh, yes! I couldn’t find you, yet I could think of nothing else. On the third night, I finally saw you again as you stumbled out of a cabaret, held aloft by a whore. I watched her perform her crude act before she rifled your pockets, stealing you blind, and then I followed you home.” He laughed cruelly. “Her I feasted upon that night. She had no appreciation for the beauty she had touched. You see, Louis, by then, I was hopelessly lost, decimated by the dark purity I’d seen in your eyes. You seemed to embody the goodness I had sought.”
Louis shook his head.
“Yes, I know you don’t see this in yourself,” Lestat said. “You are good, nevertheless. For two nights, I followed you from your townhouse, trying to read your thoughts. There were none, nothing discernible. Just a swirl of emotions. Self-loathing, fear of small places, and hatred for your brother. These things I could read from you, but little else.”
This startled Louis. “I didn’t hate Paul.”
“For giving up, for leaving you. Yes, you hated him. But your love for him was greater, far greater than the precious guilt you felt for speaking the innocent words that had crushed his unbalanced spirit. I even went out to Pointe du Lac.” He grinned and nudged his fledgling. “Not to catalog your wealth, mon petit, but to walk among your things, to see and feel as you did. Other than the beauty of the place, again I could get little sense of you.” He sighed. “The purity of your mind was a flame I could not disregard, were I inclined to do so, which I was not. It was more intoxicating than even your shimmering hair, your penetrating eyes, the perfect contours of your face.” He laughed, touching these features as he spoke. “Or your impertinent nose.”
Lestat ran a thumb across Louis’s full lower lip and then kissed him there, gently enfolding it between his own for a moment. The embrace sent an exquisite tingling shooting through Louis’s body and he leaned against his maker.
“I had fallen in love with you, Louis,” he whispered. “I couldn’t read your thoughts and the idea that I could bring you to me without losing anything excited me more than I can say. But it also angered me that I could envision myself mooning at your feet for all eternity. Me, smitten with a mortal!” He shook his head and sighed. “I could almost hear Armand laughing at me, Gabrielle’s disapproval. So I tried to kill you the following night, after trailing you from that tavern. To my horror, I could not do it. I left you there in the street, drained, and ran to the river, pacing furiously along the levee. My failure with Gabrielle and with Nicki could not overshadow the desire I felt for you. I had wanted them, but I needed you. Every vein in me ached for you. And so I decided to win your love.”
Louis smiled. “And you did, though I was loathe to admit it.” He stared out under the roof at the night sky. The gardens were on the very fringes of the Silicon Valley and the stars were brighter here. One of the pinpoints of light moved, becoming an airplane. “Why didn’t you tell me about Akasha and Marius?”
Lestat grinned maliciously. “Ask something you don’t already know, Louis. I’m secretive and I don’t play my trump card before the final bets are on the table. And we’re farther from death now than we ever were. I still haven’t told all I know. I’ve simply stopped talking about it.”
Louis stood slowly, lifting his maker, and setting him on the railing. It had been an idle question. This wasn’t really what he wanted to know. He wandered to the front of the platform, gazing over the terraces falling away to the pond below. He heard the frogs croaking there.
Lestat’s voice came quietly behind him. “I’ve done it again, haven’t I? I had no intention of being so unkind, Louis. The old Lestat slipped out.”
Louis smiled. “Wolfkiller,” he said.
“What?”
Louis turned, crossing his arms and leaning against the rail.
“Wolfkiller,” he repeated. “No matter how pensive or animated or hostile your posture becomes, the true Lestat will always be Wolfkiller.”
It had become suddenly clear to him. His maker would forever be that twenty-year-old who knew only that he must protect his kinsmen against the lurking evil. Lestat would always be that young man seeing the enormity of the world for the first time. He would always question. He would always challenge. Nothing would ever change that for very long. And he knew, for the first time, without any doubts, that Lestat had made him out of this untamed love. His smile lighted his face.
“The name suits you. It is the essence of your nature.”
Louis watched, fascinated, as the corner of his maker’s mouth curled into a grin and fire sparked his tropical eyes.
“Yes,” Lestat said. “You understand.” He clapped his hands, let out a low whoop, and leapt down from his perch.
Louis laughed as his maker caught him around the waist and whirled him about the platform. Lestat’s laughter was music enough. The peals of bells. He had never relished Lestat’s gaiety as at that moment. It mattered not at all that the song changed from bar to bar. Or that he was dizzy beyond the point of standing when, breathless, they collapsed on the bench.
He arched his neck to judge the moon’s position and grinned. It was perfect. He hauled Lestat, protesting, back to his feet and dragged him, without much real effort, up the path that led from the arbor to the very top of the garden. He saw tiny creatures skitter away as they passed, but paid them little mind.
At the crest of the hill was a bench. He pushed his maker down onto it and then sat close beside him. The trinity of redwoods were spaced before them, off-center, and he could hear the stream falling away below.
“I chanced upon this a few nights ago,” he whispered in his maker’s ear. “Watch for it. You will know when it comes.”
Lestat must have caught his excitement for he sat motionless, his eyes searching the dark garden before them. The moon’s light did not penetrate the evergreen canopy over their heads, yet its rays highlighted every tree and shrub beyond.
Then Lestat gasped. Before them, the pond in the lowest reaches of the garden erupted in a flash of light, shimmering like a beam thrown suddenly into a mirror. Indeed, its entire surface seemed to reflect a thousandfold the moon’s silvery brilliance. Its multitude of false rapids and precisely engineered falls prevented the illusion from being simply an exquisite copy of that floating orb. The schools of koi, the floating lilies, and the induced currents all conspired to refract the light, magically creating a watery diamond field.
Louis’s tone was reverent. “I’m certain the original designer intended this, but for how long has it continued, season after season, unobserved?”
The moon proceeded on its trek across the sky and the unearthly display faded.
“Who else but a vampire could appreciate such loveliness?” he asked his maker.
Lestat seemed spellbound, staring into the night. His voice held a quiet urgency. “Louis, do you still regret being a vampire? If I could somehow take you back to that night, would you choose differently?”
Louis watched his maker’s unblinking gaze. He shook his head slowly. “No, Lestat. I have never regretted being a vampire.” He extended his hand toward the pond. “Such beauty as this few mortals ever know, and yet it is you who gave me the gift of this very moment. It was the brutality of the killing I regretted, and that we were separated as we were. There was so much I had wanted you to show me, to see with your eyes. The beauty of this sight was no less when I saw it alone. Yet it is increased because it exists in your eyes now.”
Lestat rose before him. “But Louis, we’ve shared an incredible bond. Greater than any others of our kind, perhaps.”
Louis nodded. “But it seems as if it could as easily have been even more so. That there was no reason under God for us to be eternally at odds.”
“I think I understand what you’re saying, Louis,” his maker said softly.
“Tell me one thing more, Lestat. Has it never disturbed you to fall instantly in love?”
“Is there ever another way?” Lestat asked. “Is not love always like a door thrown open before you? Can you stop your mind from remembering once your heart has seen the light within?”
Louis followed as his maker continued along the path, descending on the other side of the hill. They passed numerous camellias but he did not notice.
“It has never been otherwise for me,” Lestat continued. “God knows, I’ve fought it when it happens. But I have never simply grown to love someone. Either I’m spellbound or I give them no mind.”
He halted abruptly and Louis almost collided with him as he turned, his brow furrowed.
“Why do you ask?”
“It has happened to me,” Louis said, his voice the barest whisper. His eyes were fluid as he looked into Lestat’s. “Not since you revealed your nature to me have I felt this way.” The stunned look on his maker’s face was almost more than he could bear. “Ashes, Lestat. It’s all in ashes.”
He whirled away from his maker, rushing along the path only a short distance before leaning hastily against a fencepost, his head bowed. He waited for his maker to roar. Laughter or rage, it didn’t seem to matter. He knew it would come, but he did not want to face it.
Louis jumped when he felt the strong hands on his shoulders. He turned in surprise as Lestat engulfed him in his arms. Such strength and tenderness at once!
“Oh, Louis,” he whispered. It was all Lestat could say.
His maker stroked his hair and Louis found comfort against the hardness of that preternatural flesh as all the agonies of his immortal life flooded over him again. And he let them come. His arrogance about Lestat. His complacency with Claudia. His indifference to Armand. A thousand upon a thousand sins, undiminished by time.
And finally he wept, giving in to his bitter tears. Every gossamer wall was shredded as great sobs racked his soul. He clung to his maker, the guilt and pain and sorrow overwhelming him. Irrepressible. His happiness and joy, unleashed, filling his emptiness. Bursting. Laughter mixing with his tears as he crushed Lestat to him, lost in the golden forest of his hair, so soft against his face. So precious.
Lestat rocked him gently, holding him tight, murmuring softly in his ear yet saying nothing. He smoothed his fledgling’s hair until the sobbing abated. It was a long time before Louis could speak.
“The pain is terrible. How can you live with it?”
Lestat spoke quietly. “Would you choose differently if this was the very moment when I gave you the choice? Do your regrets overshadow your joys?”
Louis buried his face in cashmere. The softness was exquisite. Forsake this simple joy and choose mortal death? He knew, as he had always known.
“I would choose to live.” And it astonished him that this no longer seemed cowardly.
“As would I, bien-aimé,” Lestat whispered, squeezing him hard. “As would I.”
Louis enjoyed the crushing affection of his maker as he loved all life. It was the essence of his own nature to be eternally in love with living, and the myriad wonderful things that love encompassed. He saw it so clearly! His fascination with the endlessly changing parade of mortals had only slept. It was not dead, as he was not dead.
He dug his handkerchief out of his pocket, but a laugh escaped him when it was immediately snatched away, Lestat clucking his tongue as he gently dried his fledgling’s eyes. Louis laughed aloud as his maker, grinning impishly, abruptly tipped his chin up so he might clean the tear stains from his cheeks.
Such affection in his maker’s eyes! Fresh tears streamed down his face.
“You’re not helping, Louis,” Lestat chided quietly, yet there was amusement in his smile.
Louis firmly pressed his lips together and breathed deeply. “I’m afraid I’ve made a mess of your sweater as well.”
Lestat twisted his head and pulled the finely knitted fabric away from his shoulder. He swore under his breath when he saw the stain. And then he laughed.
“Probably serves me right, dressing for you.” He shook his head as he took Louis’s hand, giving it a quick squeeze. “Just get me to water before this sets.”
Louis led his maker down the path and through a bamboo gate. Around the last of the camellias and they were standing at the very tip of the lowest pond. Lestat crouched beside the water and laid Louis’s handkerchief over a half-submerged stone before pulling the sweater off his back. Louis knelt beside him and began squeezing water through the handkerchief as his maker dowsed the stain on his sweater.
“They all spoke with you, Lestat. Am I truly the only one of us never to have lain in the earth?” he asked.
Lestat nodded, inspecting the stain before dipping it again. “Of the ones I know who are old enough to feel it, you and Maharet alone among us never seemed to crave that rest.” He shrugged. “And Armand, I think, though that’s hardly relevant now.” He seemed satisfied that the stain was as clean as he was going to get it. “I have always envied the serenity I saw behind your sorrow, you know.” He laughed lightly, compressing the delicate knit in his powerful hand, the water streaming away. “Louis, the pure vampire.”
Louis shook his head as he began wringing out the square of linen. “Akasha called me predatory.”
Lestat snorted. “Akasha was obsessive-compulsive.”
“You’re reading mortal psychology?”
He shrugged and shook out his sweater. “Was. It seemed the logical progression after all that demonology and drivel on religious symbolism I filled my head with.” He sighed. “Waste of time. It all contradicts itself after a few pages anyway.” He grinned. “But it does do wonders for the vocabulary.” He smoothed the cashmere. To all but a vampire, it appeared clean and dry. He pulled it back over his head, cringing as he adjusted the damp spot.
“She was right about me, though,” Louis said, draping the handkerchief over his hand and frowning. It was still noticeably wet. “I’m not discriminating in choosing my victims.”
“Here, let me do that,” Lestat said, taking the linen and crushing it in his hand. Water poured out. He shook his head. “That’s your purity, your complete acceptance of your vampire nature. Your utter lack of vanity protects you from the delusion that murdering murderers makes you a nice guy.” He grinned and, rising, handed Louis the handkerchief.
Louis smiled at his maker’s jest and stood, marveling at his handkerchief before stuffing the linen into his pocket. He slid his arm around Lestat’s waist as he led them back through the bamboo gate.
His maker slipped his arm around Louis’s waist, holding him loosely as they followed the path toward the farthest reaches of the garden. Soon, they were lost in a forest of bamboo, the stalks as big around as their arms and reaching seemingly to the heavens.
Lestat turned in circles. “This is worse than a topiary maze!”
A laugh escaped Louis’s lips. “Around the corner.” He pointed and his maker found the passage that led to a low retaining wall surrounding a sea of carefully raked pebbles. They sat cross-legged atop the wall.
Lestat gently patted his fledgling’s knee. “Now tell me how it happened.”
His maker composed himself to listen and for a moment, Louis could imagine Lestat in the attire of a Buddhist monk, spending eternity contemplating the little Zen garden. Strange image.
Louis described the previous night’s events, telling every detail. When he had finished, he sat quietly regarding the large granite stone that swam among the white pebbles. The stone appeared to breath and grow under his gaze.
Lestat finally spoke. “You ask a great thing of me.”
“Yes.”
All the air seemed to leave his maker as he sighed.
“Wait here for me,” he instructed.
“Lestat, no!” Louis pleaded, but Lestat had already gone, taken to the air.
Louis stared furiously at the rock in the Zen garden and again fought the urge to tear it out of the earth and hurl it away from him. For nearly two hours, he’d paced and stared down the rock. Paced. And envisioned ripping the bamboo to shreds. And paced.
Something flashed behind him and he whipped around to confront it, expecting Lestat. He stopped short, unable to breathe, for his maker was not alone.
“Chérie?” he stammered, finding his voice and rushing to her. “Are you all right, Chérie? If he has harmed even one--”
“Relax, Louis,” Lestat said. “I have done nothing to her. See for yourself. Mon Dieu! But he worries too much!” He smiled and stepped safely back as Louis reached her, catching her up in his arms and turning her.
“Louis,” she whispered as she buried her face in his neck, kissing him. Louis smiled so contentedly he felt he would never stop, so close to bursting.
“Do you remember the pain now, Louis?” Lestat’s voice interrupted.
Louis looked at his maker, standing by the bamboo, and shook his head. “No,” he said, smiling. It was too wonderful having her in his arms.
“That is how you live with it, bien-aimé. And now you know how I feel every time I look upon you.” He approached them and laid his hand on Louis’s shoulder, squeezing it gently before he stroked Chérie’s warm, brown hair. “Ah, you are correct. She could be our sister.” His eyes flashed at Louis as he smiled. “She should be our sister.”
“How did you find her?” Louis asked, setting Chérie carefully on her feet.
“You forget how well you can pinpoint someone’s lair with your words, my friend.” Lestat raised an eyebrow, though Louis did not understand why. “I only needed to get close and then from her own thoughts I found her. For an hour, I sat in her walnut tree listening to her type on that pretty computer, watching her come into the yard and gaze at the stars.”
“I about died when you dropped out of that tree!” She laughed.
Lestat’s sharp glance left Louis no doubt in how differently the meeting would have gone for her if his maker had not received whatever it was he had wanted.
“You had nothing to fear from me, ma chère,” Lestat said. “I only wanted to meet the one who had finally enchanted the most beautiful of us all.”
Louis blushed.
His maker suddenly drew Louis into his arms. When he continued, his voice was so quiet Louis strained to hear his words. He was certain Chérie with her mortal ears could not hear.
“She loves you dearly, Louis. You are indeed fortunate. She does not want what we have. She wants you. That is what I needed to learn, and she alone could tell me this. Do you forgive me?”
Louis’s voice came low and to his maker’s ear only, his face pressed close among the yellow curls. “Of course, but you should have told me what you meant to do. I love you, Lestat, and I can understand your caution.”
Chérie watched, eyes damp and hands clasped to her lips, what to her was a silent display of affection.
Lestat whispered in his fledgling’s ear. “And I love you, Louis. My precious Louis.”
Louis’s eyes squeezed shut as his maker stroked his hair. Not in two hundred years had he ever heard those words cross Lestat’s lips, and hearing the words, he realized how very much he had always craved them. The tightness was crushing his heart and yet he smiled at the welcome pain.
Lestat pulled back. Blood tears stained his fledgling’s cheeks and his lips parted at the sight of them.
“You’re not starting that again, are you?” Lestat gently wiped the tears away, grinning lecherously as he sucked the blood from his hand.
Louis laughed quietly.
His maker invited Chérie to sit with him. But it was to Louis he spoke. “Are you certain this is what you want?”
“Yes.”
“Then it shall be as you desire.” He smiled at Chérie kindly, smoothing her hair absently, but he continued speaking to Louis. “I’ve already spoken with her and she knows what she will become. But some of these things I need you to hear, Louis.”
He lowered himself beside them. What could Lestat possibly say that he didn’t already know?
His maker searched his face before continuing. “I do this for you, Louis. You know the others will not be pleased with this. But then, when have I ever tolerated anyone’s rules?” He grinned. “I will make her one of us because you love her. But only on the condition that you do not feed from her.”
Louis made to protest but Lestat held up a hand.
“I’ll not deny this is a gift I’ve longed to give you myself. That is part of it, certainly, but it is not for this reason alone. My blood is unlike that of any other vampire and it should not be diluted unnecessarily. You will come to me for that when it is time. Then it will not matter and you may feast upon each other to the end of time.” Lestat smiled at Chérie and pressed his lips to her fingers. “Chérie has read my books. She knows upon whom I have fed and understands. Do you also agree, Louis?”
“Yes.”
“And she must come away with me.” He again held up his hand to silence his fledgling. “Chérie will have powers you’ll be unable to teach her to control. We will not go far or for very long, but these powers could be dangerous to you until she learns and I will not risk your safety, Louis. Do you understand?”
Louis narrowed his gaze. “Will you allow her to stare at your buttons forever if she so desires?”
His maker laughed and shook his head wearily. “Yes, Louis. For you, I will try to be patient. Do you agree then?”
“Yes,” Louis said, amusement in his eyes. “If you will find a way to endure the adoration, then yes, I agree.”
“Good.” Lestat’s smile faded. “Let me warn you, Louis, as I have her, that the need to kill may still be there at the beginning. Remember this is part of our nature. Do not judge her because of it. If David is any measure, it should quickly fade and very soon she will not need to hunt for long periods. Now explain to her how the Dark Trick will be worked on her.”
He stood abruptly and disappeared among the bamboo.
Chérie gasped, as if she’d been holding her breath. “He is beautiful, isn’t he?”
Louis murmured his agreement. “I can get lost for hours in his eyes. And his embrace is near to passion.” He smiled. “But you shall see, Chérie.” He searched her eyes and his smile broadened. “You love him already, don’t you?”
Her cheeks flushed deeply and she stared at her hands. “Yes, Louis.”
“You never need conceal this, my love.” He nodded when she turned her surprised gaze on him. “Love is different for us and I’m glad you love him as I do. You will be like his child, Chérie, and his blood will change you.”
“He will drink from me?”
“Yes. Do not fight him. Remember, you are not his victim and he does this out of love. Hold him tightly and keep your eyes wide open. See everything, my love, and hear everything. He will drain you to the very point of death and you will become too weak to move. Do not fear this. Just feel it all, for you will never feel it again. He will stop before your heart stops. Then you will drink from him.”
She shuddered and he smiled warmly, kissing her cheek. “Do not be concerned, my love. It will not be unpleasant and you will want it like nothing else. Drink as deeply and for as long as you can. Your powers will depend upon it. Do as he instructs. You may feel pain afterwards as the change begins. Do not worry and remember to feel everything. This only happens once.”
He gathered her into his arms, kissing her gently and stroking her hair, until Lestat returned and knelt beside them.
“Are you ready, Chérie?” he asked quietly. “Do you wish to be as we are?”
She gazed into Louis’s eyes, cradling his cheek in her hand, before turning to Lestat and smiling.
“Yes,” she said.
“Then take her, Louis.”
“What?”
“Take her. You know what that moment is like and I will not steal it from you. She shall be made as Claudia was made. You will drain her to the point of death and I shall give her life again.”
Louis furrowed his brow, his eyes filled with concern.
“Don’t fret, bien-aimé. You won’t still her heart.” He studied the grass under his boots. “And in this way, neither shall I.”
He cannot kill! Louis knew he should not be surprised, but it had been his maker’s passion, the hunt, the kill. It must torment him. This was the foreboding he’d sensed earlier!
Louis’s attention was drawn by Chérie’s voice.
“Thank you,” she told Lestat and quickly embraced him.
“For Louis, I would do anything. Perhaps now he will believe me.” He smiled at the mortal woman in his arms, stroking her cheek tenderly. “You are a gift I give him, Chérie, but you will be my fledgling. Be kind when the time comes that you would curse me for what I do this night.”
Chérie smiled up at him, searching his blue-gray eyes. “I will never curse you, Lestat.” She pulled his face close, kissing his lips and then pressing her cheek to his.
Louis watched his maker, seeing the predatory look they all got glaze his eyes, so near to mortal blood.
Lestat laughed quietly. “I hope you’re correct, ma chère.” He released Chérie and she turned to Louis.
He slipped his arms around her, holding her firmly. “Remember all I told you, my love.”
Her arms encircled him and she nodded. “I love you, Louis.”
He kissed her mouth, her cheek, and nuzzled her neck, the vein stretching taut under her skin at his touch.
“I love you, Chérie,” he said, his lips against her flesh. Then his sharp teeth penetrated that thin, elastic barrier and he sighed as her blood gushed into his mouth. Pressing her body close, he was dimly aware of her, gasping and clutching his sweater, as the thick warmth crossed his tongue in wave after wave. Every hair tingled as he pressed his lips tighter around the wound, becoming an inseparable part of her, drawing the blood hard now. Plummeting down his throat, setting off shudders of ecstasy that spread throughout his preternatural flesh.
He heard the drum approaching, pounding its own rhythm, careening through the darkness of his being. Away it raced, to the second drum, which beat strong and steady. The drum that was his own beating heart.
Her blood rushed through every tiny vein in his body, scorching all it touched so that every surface felt the uncontrolled excitement so like the edge of passion. Engulfing him as their hearts beat together, the pounding deafening, thundering through his senses.
Her heart slowed and he drank deeper, willing her to stay with him. Live! He felt her body grow lifeless in his arms and he became suddenly aware of Lestat’s hands on his shoulders, not yet drawing him away. He released her immediately and sat back hard on the grass, gasping.
She lay crumpled yet peaceful, her breast rising only shallowly with her breathing. Not quite at the point of death but close enough that she was unable to move more than her eyes.
“What are you doing, Louis?” Lestat demanded. “You haven’t drained her!”
Louis saw the blood lust in his maker’s eyes, recognized it, and knew he was correct about the torment with which Lestat struggled.
“Finish it,” he said, desperately pulling on Lestat’s sleeve. “You must! You can’t deny your hunger, any more than I could.”
“No!” His maker shook his head violently, but Louis continued in earnest.
“Can I love you less than you have loved me? Do it! Make her your true fledgling. Take her life, Lestat! And then give that life back to her. Only then will you give me what I desire.”
Anguish filling his face, Lestat fastened onto her in a rush. A low moan escaped Chérie and a shudder crossed Lestat’s back as it was quickly done.
Crimson stained his maker’s mouth as he pulled back, Chérie at the very threshold of death. Louis embraced Lestat, crushing him in his arms and grasping a handful of yellow hair as his maker’s fangs sank into his neck, not yet satiated.
Louis’s lips parted, his eyes rolling back as the blood surged out of him. The ferocity of Lestat’s hunger startled him, the wild pulling on his veins excruciating. The hardness of his maker eased under his grip, pliant with blood. With her blood.
He groaned at the intimacy he’d not felt with his maker in over two centuries.
Lestat suddenly released him and Louis tumbled to the ground.
“Enough!” his maker gasped, hastening to raise his wrist to his mouth, tearing his own flesh. He leaned over Chérie and pressed the bloody wound to her lips as Louis took her head in his lap.
“Drink, Chérie,” Louis urged her quietly, picking bits of grass from her chocolate tresses. He met Lestat’s gaze when she remained motionless.
“Her heart beats still,” his maker assured him. He leaned close to whisper in her ear. “Drink and live forever with Louis.”
He heard Lestat gasp and saw fire light those hypnotic eyes as he felt a violent shudder jolt Chérie. He glanced down to see her lips move on the wound and her eyes open wide, staring at him. He smiled and stroked her hair gently.
“Drink, Chérie.”
She regained enough strength to clutch her maker’s wrist and her gaze shifted to Lestat.
Louis marveled as he watched their blue-gray eyes lock, maker and fledgling, Lestat’s in pain and hers in wonder. So alike!
The skin on Lestat’s face drew taut as she drained him. Yet he let her drink deeper as he paled. When his lids began drooping, he gently pulled his wrist free. Instantly, her maker fastened onto her again and she clutched at his back, his hair.
“It’s all right, Chérie,” Louis soothed. “You’re alive. Remember what I told you and see it all.”
Calm filled her eyes and he knew she was hearing his voice differently now, sorting out the sounds with her vampire ears. Hearing it as music, for the first time. He smiled.
Quickly, she was limp again in Lestat’s arms. Releasing her, he reopened his wrist and gave it to her. She drank from hunger now, her maker’s face twisting into a grimace. More quickly did she drain him, her appetite matching her maker’s. Deeper she drank, watching her maker, rapture in her eyes.
“Once more, Chérie,” Lestat told her, freeing his arm, his eyes falling slowly shut as his mouth closed on her neck for the third time.
She gasped in pleasure and entangled her hands in his yellow curls, running the strands curiously between her fingers. Her lips parted as Lestat pressed her closer and Louis saw that her fledgling teeth had begun lengthening. He watched her skin pale, becoming, like theirs, the smooth texture of polished bone. Her warm brown hair glistened, lustrous with hints of gold and auburn.
Lestat drank deeper, hungrily, until her arms again hung lifeless. He drew back and licked the wound free of blood before offering himself to her, pressing her mouth to his throat. He whispered quietly, gently instructing her until she had made the gash herself, her fangs already sharp enough to tear his hardened flesh.
Louis watched, fascinated, as her pallor deepened further, becoming like marble as she gorged herself on her transmuted blood. Her eyes sparkled with Lestat’s fire, thirst upon thirst, feeding upon him.
Their maker’s gaze was swimming, his lips pulled back as she drained him, fangs revealed. He groaned and yet he let her go on drinking. Only when she clutched her stomach did Lestat pull himself free, collapsing breathless in the grass.
“Help her, Louis,” he gasped, slipping into unconsciousness, near to death himself.
Louis already had his arm around Chérie’s shoulders, supporting her as she sat. Lestat’s condition was alarming, his skin stretched tight, the bones visible, and his clothes loose about his shriveled form. It was far too close to how he had appeared after Claudia had finished with him, with her little knife.
But Lestat was breathing, slowly, evenly. And Louis felt Chérie’s eyes upon him.
Her hand reached out to touch his face but paused as she drew it back, turning her fingers to inspect her nails, which had become as transparent as glass.
Louis smiled and helped her slowly to her feet.
“Come, Chérie,” he whispered. “You are alive and becoming as we are. But your body is dying.”
She smiled, her eyes sparkling, touching his lips, his face, stroking his hair as he led her away, past the bamboo and into a stand of scrub oaks beside the little stream.
Eyes wide and lips parted, she stared up at the trees as if God had just created them.
“So many beautiful things to see now,” he said reverently. “And we shall see them all, my love. But remain here for a few moments as your mortal body dies.”
Chérie looked up at him quizzically. “Louis,” she began but halted, grinning in delight. She repeated his name several times, making him smile, as she became accustomed to her vampire’s voice.
“It hurts, Louis,” she said, touching her torso as a violent shudder passed through her.
He held her gently as the pains rocked her, soothing her when she seemed frightened. Finally, they began subsiding.
Her body would need purging and he knew she could still feel embarrassment.
“Your body is changing and it needs to rid itself of that which it no longer needs. Stay here,” he repeated, touching her alabaster cheek. “You will help your body. Do what you need to do. Remove your clothes and cleanse yourself in the water, if you like. You are safe here,” he assured her quietly. “You will feel it all. And you will live. Remember that, my love, that you are alive. Listen to the water singing to you if there is more pain. Stay here until it is over and then come to me.”
He squeezed her hand and left her, trailing her fingers through the little stream.
Lestat was lying prone on the grass, staring up at the stars. The moon still glowed, though it had sunk behind the western mountains. He lay next to his maker, on his side, head propped on one arm. Lestat had already regained much of his normal appearance. Louis shook his head in wonder and, with his free hand, broke off a blade of grass. He brought it to his lips, taking its green between his teeth and chewing it.
“That’s disgusting.” Lestat sighed.
Louis smiled broadly. “I have an image to maintain and would not want to disappoint you. Bourgeois planter, indeed.” He laughed silently and spat the bitter pulp into the dirt. “You scared me, Lestat. I’m only glad Chérie didn’t see you or she would have panicked, as David did.”
He plucked another blade of grass and ran it under his maker’s nose. Lestat grinned and swatted at it with some effort, curling his upper lip to stave off the assault. A giggle escaped him.
“Stop that, Louis! Before I have a real fit. We still have much to do. You haven’t provided for her, have you?”
Louis swore and dropped the blade. “No,” he admitted. “I didn’t know how quickly you’d come or if you’d even do this.”
Lestat’s smile was mischievous. “Well, I did. After listening to her for only a few minutes, I knew I would do this, for you both. I flew off at once and secreted a coffin roomy enough for two in her backyard.” His eyes twinkled. “And may you never doubt my affections again.”
Louis laughed aloud.
His maker’s smile faded. “It will be sad never to hear her thoughts again. She has the sweetest silent voice, Louis. You must try to hear it. Never stop trying to learn.”
Louis’s smile collapsed. He had been trying to hear her but could not. It had never been among his vampiric talents.
Lestat rolled to face him. “You will come to me won’t you, Louis? Drink from me again and grow stronger?”
“Yes, Lestat,” Louis said, shaking his head in astonishment. “This is the only one of your gifts that I crave, your telepathic voice. And the possibility of not feeding nightly is attractive, but that should not surprise you.”
His maker nodded. “Yes, there is peace there, Louis, though as you so cleverly guessed, the desire to feed doesn’t disappear. It had been more than a year since I last fed and the thirst had become unbearable in the last two months.”
“Strange how I have been able to think of almost nothing but you recently,” Louis mused.
“Perhaps,” Lestat allowed. “But we’ve always had the most peculiar bond. I would always know when you entered a room even though I couldn’t sense you through your thoughts or from your step, which is infuriatingly silent at times. And now I believe it’s your goodness, your purity.”
Louis smiled. “Not your infinite power?” he teased.
His maker snorted. “Couldn’t be me or I’d have had similar connections with David and Gabrielle. No, whatever it is, it comes from you, bien-aimé.”
“Do you think drinking from you again would disrupt it?”
“For years, I feared it might,” Lestat whispered, his fingers lightly touching his fledgling’s cheek. “I worried if I made you stronger I would destroy the very thing that always drew me back to you, that human tenderness you never lost.” He shook his head sadly. “So I never pressed you to again drink. Now I’m certain it’s an innate gift you have, Louis, and I don’t believe it can be corrupted. Power should only enhance it. But you’ll have a chance to watch Chérie and see how she changes before you come to me.” His eyes shifted. “Should I check on her?”
Rolling to his feet, Louis shook his head. “Thank you, but no. I would like every moment possible with her. You’ll take her away after we rise?”
His maker nodded. “It’s safer that way.”
Louis knelt beside him. “Did it hurt when I told you of my love for her?” he asked quietly.
“Yes, it’s strange that I’m not envious of her and furious with you for your infidelity.” He laughed and pulled himself to his feet. “But no, Louis, I wasn’t hurt.”
He stood beside his maker, his smile relieved.
Lestat grinned. “I’m glad you finally wanted someone for yourself as much as I wanted you. For once, we seem to have found common ground. Now go, take care of her!”
Louis smiled and, bowing, turned to do as he was told. He almost fell over Chérie, grinning up at him. She jumped lightly out of his way and twirled happily.
“I could hear you,” she said. “Well, ‘feel you’ is more accurate, I guess.”
“Could you, Chérie?” her maker asked, eyes twinkling. “And how is it you were able to sneak up on us both?”
She appeared not to hear his question, her gaze rapt as she stared at his eyes, gingerly touching his tanned face, his lustrous blond hair.
Louis laughed.
“Shut up, Louis,” Lestat growled amiably. “I enjoy her touching me. And remember, you asked me to allow it. Now tell me how you did it, Chérie.”
She shrugged. “I don’t know. I just wanted to find Louis and then I was beside him.”
Lestat nodded, smoothing her hair. “You have talent, ma chère. Let me teach you one thing quickly.”
“Flying?” she asked, her eyes alight.
Louis furrowed his brow. Taking to the air was perhaps the most disconcerting of their maker’s gifts and yet she seemed to actually relish the thought of it.
Lestat seemed puzzled by this as well.
Seeing their expressions, she smiled. “I was born in an age of space flight. I’ve long held dreams of flying unaided. It’s not uncommon among my contemporaries.”
“Hard to argue with that,” Louis observed.
Lestat nodded his agreement. “Let’s try something controlled, Chérie.” He pointed to a large fir tree with widely spaced branches a short distance away. “There. Follow me. Do as I do.”
Moving too fast to be seen, Lestat alighted halfway up the tree.
Chérie tipped her head thoughtfully and then she was beside him on the branch. Louis could hear their maker’s delight, but not what Lestat whispered in her ear. Her maker wrapped his arms around her waist and then they were streaking upward. Louis tilted his head, straining to see them against the stars. They plummeted once, but Lestat leaned close to her ear and they instantly rose together.
How utterly alien! He lost them among the stars, until they suddenly dropped toward the ground on either side of him. He tumbled over backwards to avoid being crushed under their feet.
“Having fun, you two?” he snarled as they giggled.
Lestat became serious. “I’ll need to take her away the moment we rise. She’s gaining her powers even faster than David.”
Louis glanced at Chérie.
“This also means she’ll probably learn as fast or faster, and it may only be for a night or so.” Their maker smiled. “But for now, we should get back to her house. Dawn is not far off.”
“How should we do this?” she asked.
“It’s probably best if Louis comes with me but that you hold his hand.” Lestat crooked a finger under her chin. “We don’t want you enamored with Mars, my dear.”
Louis held onto their maker’s waist as they lifted from the ground. Chérie rose beside him and clasped his fingers.
They dropped unobserved into her backyard. Lestat immediately pointed out the large cardboard box partially concealed against a honeysuckle-covered fence. He noticed Louis’s delight over the multitude of blossoms.
“There’s bougainvillea all along the back fence as well, just about to bloom.” He raised an eyebrow teasingly. “But no Queen’s Wreath.”
“I’m truly sorry, Lestat,” Chérie said. “I’m really an appalling gardener and don’t spend near enough time out here.”
“It’s all right, Chérie,” her maker assured her, jumping a cyclone fence that divided the yard. “We can bring up some cuttings from the townhouse.”
“Where’s he going?” Louis asked. Then he saw Lestat romping with a large canine. He stared at Chérie. “You have a dog?”
She laughed. “It’s a common practice, you know. I’ve raised Glennie from a pup.”
“He may not recognize you now.”
“She. Glennie is a Scottish deerhound.” She approached the enclosure cautiously, however, and Lestat brought the animal to the fence. After the requisite sniffing and tail wagging, it was apparent there would be no emotional separations. Chérie jumped the fence effortlessly and embraced the enormous dog.
“Come here, Louis. She won’t bite.”
He stared at the animal warily.
“Come on, Louis!” Lestat goaded. “If Mojo can tolerate you....”
“Mojo tried to rip my throat out that first night.” Louis crouched beside the fence, but out of reach should that long muzzle decide he made a tempting meal. The dog tipped her head this way and that, sizing him up through the fence before hanging her tongue out her mouth.
“Hold out the back of your hand to her,” Chérie encouraged.
He did and in went the tongue. Glennie seemed only curious however as she sniffed the proffered hand through the poles of the gate. Louis had to keep from jumping when the tongue suddenly darted out, leaving a damp trail across his flesh. His lips parted in a wondrous smile that seemed to match the dog’s own.
“You’re in, babe,” Chérie pronounced.
Louis inched closer and Glennie let him reach through the fence to run his hand down her wiry fur. His smile broadened.
“This is interesting, but dawn is coming.” Louis rose slowly to avoid startling the dog. As he turned to retrieve the large box, Chérie and their maker joined him.
Lestat cleared his throat. “I took the liberty of checking you out of that dreadful hotel, Louis.”
He spotted his trunk by the backdoor. “You were busy, weren’t you?”
“Not really,” Lestat said smugly, lifting the trunk easily. He waited for his fledglings to pass with the larger box before following them through the darkened garage.
“It seems so strange not to need the light,” Chérie said.
Louis smiled as they lowered the box and uncrated the coffin. She gasped when she saw its lacquered wooden surface.
Lestat laughed and shook his head. “Fledglings. How they love their coffins.” He paused dutifully for her kiss as he passed, carrying the trunk into the house.
“This may seem odd to you,” she confided to Louis, “but I’ve never actually seen a coffin, much less been this close to one.”
Louis took her in his arms, kissing her softly. “You shall be closer still, my love.”
Lestat stuck his head back out the door. “Children. Come along now.”
They laughed and carefully maneuvered the coffin through the house and into her bedroom. Lestat had already made room for it.
Chérie smiled. “Is he always this thoughtful?”
“Rarely,” Louis said, winking at Lestat, who entered and dumped a pile of sweaters on the bed.
“Vos guenilles, monsieur,” he sneered, leaving.
“Your what?” Chérie asked.
Louis blushed. “My rags.”
“Oh.” She stacked the sweaters neatly against the pillows. “You can rearrange anything you like. Make some room for your clothes, which I happen to like, thank you.” Her fingers lingered on his sweaters, momentarily entranced with their softness. Then she laughed. “And I think I’d better pick up a new Larousse. I get the feeling I’m going to need it desperately.”
“What’s a Larousse?”
“The publisher of a good French-English dictionary.”
“No need,” Lestat said, returning to drop the remainder of Louis’s clothes on the bed. “Not unless you can find one from the eighteenth century. Our French is a little old-fashioned, I’m afraid, though we’ve adopted a modern phrase here and there. But you’ll pick it up quickly, Chérie. I couldn’t read a word when I was Born to Darkness.”
Her eyes grew wide, a mild panic suddenly creeping into her gaze as the enormity of what he was saying seemed to descend upon her in full force. She clasped a hand to her mouth.
Without hesitation, Lestat gently took her hand and held her open palm against his cheek, allowing her to feel his solid flesh. Then he touched her in the same fashion, his hand open upon her cheek. And when he spoke, it was with a quiet tenderness that startled Louis.
“Do you see, my dear? We are real. We are standing here with you now, though we were born long ago.” Lestat smiled warmly as he gathered her into his arms, holding her close to his heart. “It will be difficult at first, but don’t let it upset you. Take comfort in knowing that understanding will come. In time.”
Louis watched in awe. Lestat loved her! And the despair that had clouded his maker’s face only hours earlier had utterly vanished. When had that happened, and when was the last time he’d seen such peace and radiance illuminate that beautiful face he knew so well? The realization of what he was witnessing struck him hard and he briefly squeezed his eyes shut, reveling in the happiness that flooded over him. Lestat was alive!
Chérie sighed deeply and wrapped her arms around her maker’s waist, her hands pressed against his back. “You are a comfort, Lestat. I can already understand why Louis loves you so.”
He laughed brightly. “I’m afraid I haven’t always been so kind to Louis.” He drew her away and playfully ran his finger down her nose. Then he was clapping his hands together like a governess. “Now get ready for your rest, you two. Toute de suite!” He quickly left them alone.
Chérie leaned over to Louis. “I knew that one.”
He smiled and then laughed quietly, shaking his head in wonder. He turned and finished straightening his clothes, setting aside fresh jeans, socks, and underwear, before he took her hands in his.
“He’s correct, my love. There’s less than an hour before dawn and I don’t keep Lestat’s hours. If you’ll excuse me, I’ll give you some privacy so you may change.”
Louis moved to leave but she stopped him as he neared the door, holding him fast against the wall with one hand. His hand flew to remove hers but it would not budge. His eyes blazed wide over her strength.
“Don’t be such a gentleman. I’m not exactly a blushing teenager, you know.” Chérie eased her pressure slightly, but he was no less immobilized. “Please don’t go, Louis.”
Lestat again approached the door but stopped short, giggling at the sight. “A woman after my own heart!”
She pointed her free hand at her maker, grinning and trying to appear menacing. “You’d better be serious if you come through that door again.”
Lestat held up both hands and obediently remained in the hall, his giggles multiplying. “Not tonight, I think. I just wanted to be certain it was all right with Louis if I made use of his chest.”
“Amusez-vous.”
“Merci, Louis. Bonne nuit, Chérie.” He could no longer contain his laughter as he pulled the door closed.
“Bonne nuit,” she echoed, sliding her arms around Louis.
He bent to kiss her hungrily, his desire for her cresting, greater than any he’d ever known. He enveloped her in his arms, pressing her hardened preternatural flesh tightly against him as his tongue slipped between her parted lips. He scratched its surface over her newborn fangs, lethal and sharp, and tasted his blood in her mouth, arousing him further as her mouth closed on the tiny source of blood. So intimate that she should know the taste of his blood now! When she would have done the same, her tongue sliding over the surface of his fangs, feeling their shape and length, he gently broke the embrace.
“No, Chérie. Not even a drop.” He kissed the tip of her nose. “We should change, before we fall unconscious where we stand. The heavy drapes will not keep out enough of the sun for us.”
Louis pulled off his sweater and chose another from the bed. Tugging it over his head, he saw her watching him. He sat on the bed and tried not to blush as he pulled off his boots and set them aside. As he removed his socks, he was surprised to realize he rather enjoyed the intimacy of her eyes on him. Yet, he felt the nearness of the dawn keenly. He quickly finished changing and rose.
“Come, Chérie. I have but a few minutes remaining.” Louis raised the coffin’s heavy lid, revealing a silk lining in the deepest blue. He smiled, pressing the fingers of one hand to his lips. “He knows me so well,” he murmured and then turned to see her slip an oversized tee-shirt into place. Her long legs were so very pale now, radiant. He sighed, scarcely believing that in only moments she would be stretched out beside him in the coffin.
A flush rose in her cheeks. “I don’t think anyone has ever looked at me quite like that, Louis,” she whispered. She pulled at her tee-shirt. “It’s what I always wear. Do you think it will be warm enough?”
“Probably not, but we shall keep each other warm.” He held out his hand and smiled.
Louis felt the trembling in her delicate fingers as he stepped into the coffin and then carefully guided her over its side. Her uneasiness gave way to fascination, however, as she watched him lay among its shimmering folds. He gently drew her down beside him, into his arms, and she nestled in against his shoulder, her legs intertwined with his. He smiled when her hand reached out to touch the silk before encircling his waist.
“It’s so soft, Louis! I could never have imagined how soft it is, lying like this.”
“Yes, my love. But get comfortable. Once sleep descends, you’ll remain as you are until nightfall.”
Chérie tipped her head up to gaze into his dark green eyes and he kissed her.
“Perfect,” she said, smiling contentedly.
Louis returned her smile as he reached up and firmly grasped the lid. She tensed briefly and he paused.
“I’m afraid there’s no way to prepare you for this, Chérie. Hold tight to me if it becomes disconcerting and listen to the beating of my heart.” Louis kissed her again when she nodded. “Remember, you’re alive, my love, and you will awaken at sunset.” He furrowed his brow and smiled playfully. “I, on the other hand, may appear ready never to wake again. But Lestat should be up when you rise, so don’t wait for me. You could expire from sheer boredom waiting for me to rise.”
She was laughing as he pulled the lid shut, but gasped nonetheless when the darkness became total. He held her close, stroking her silky hair until she relaxed.
“Never in my life have I been this happy, my love.” He felt his arms becoming motionless. She too was becoming still, pressed so exquisitely against him. “I love you, Chérie,” he said, closing his eyes.
“And I love y--”
But they were lost in Death’s sleep.
“How sublime friendship between Lestat and me.”
Louis (IWTV, p62, pb)
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